At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 [Hardcover]

Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The tranquil expressions of the women in the period portraits illustrating Garrett's opus belie the deep domestic drudgery of colonial housekeeping. In her scrupulously researched book, the vice-president of Sotheby's Manhattan analyzes early American family life chamber by chamber, studying paintings, personal writings, even poetry. A housewife, judged by her linen closet, exerted herculean efforts maintaining it: countless hours of laundering, repairing and ironing tablecloths and the elaborate bed hangings that kept out the cold. There was the endless polishing of floors and windows, pewter and mirrors, and the equally humble chore of banishing ubiquitous dust, mud and candle drippings. Two final chapters give such toil a human, comprehensible dimension, suggesting that a well-run home was a woman's way of battling, physically and symbolically, the disease and death of her day. So seen, domestic details of floor and wall coverings and furniture style and placement accumulate and resonate.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The vice-president at Sotheby's and associate director of its American Arts Course examines letters, diaries, travel accounts, novels, poetry, household inventories, newspaper advertisements, and housekeeping manuals as well as paintings, prints, and drawings for this study. Garrett's clear, easy style, coupled with nearly 200 illustrations (more than 100 in color), make this book accessible to the general reader. However, because of the thorough research and substantial bibliography, it is more than mere pictorial history and allows comparison with such scholarly works as Stephanie Coontz's The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600-1900 ( LJ 2/1/89) and America's Families: A Documentary History , edited by Donald M. Scott and Bernard Wishy ( LJ 1/15/82). Recommended for academic and large public libraries.
- Cindy Faries, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (September 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810918943
• ISBN-13: 978-0810918948
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #343,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book brings life to historic homes, December 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 (Hardcover)

At Home gives detailed descriptions of the daily routine "behind the scenes" for families and houses from 1750-1870. This book provides valuable background for understanding the lives of people who inhabited the historic homes that I take my interior design students to visit. We can appreciate the objects, furniture, and furnishings much more when we realize how they were used and how much work it took to maintain them!

5.0 out of 5 stars Voices coming through, October 6, 2011

By 

Bonita Kale (Cleveland, OH, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 (Hardcover)

In this book, all the really interesting bits that in other books are smushed into one chapter, are given their rightful place. Using many quotations, mostly from women, Garrett brings us into earlier American domestic life.

Why did 18th Century people keep the furniture around the walls of the rooms? Aesthetics, or, as Garrett suggests, to avoid falling over a stool as you make your way around in the dark, with only a candle? And how did they anything done with a lively toddler running around, when it is "too cold to tye her into a chair"?

Possibly my favorite word picture in the book is "Benjamin Franklin Perry, visiting in Columbia, South Carolina, reached out automatically in his sleep to make sure his son's crib covers were up, awakening to find that he wasn't at home after all."

It's a lovely book--large, glossy, with a bibliography and index, with notes at the end where they are out of the way yet findable, and illustrated thoroughly.

5.0 out of 5 stars My Absolute Favorite, December 19, 2009

By 

Brian J. Cushing - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: At Home: The American Family 1750-1870 (Hardcover)

As a reenactor/interpreter of life in America in the late 18th/early 19th Century, my primary interest is in the day to day life of common people during those times. This book provided an in depth, well organized, and "digestable" look at that topic.